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A sprite is an encapsulated 2D image that gets drawn to the screen/window at a specific position. The sprite's exact image may itself change (be animated), and its position may vary (motion) yielding an animated character that moves around the screen either autonomously (background effects, enemies, etc) or based on user input (avatar, the Hero, etc).

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A sprite is usually a 2D (has a width and a height but no depth) image whose main function is to be some kind of 'actor' or 'prop' in an animated scene or game.

For the best example of sprites, look at older console games like Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog: the Mario character was a sprite.

In a bit more detail, Mario was a series of sprites used together to make animations - e.g. the animation of him running was done with 2 sprites alternating.

Sprites are often used with tiles in 2D games. Tiles are basically just sprites but are used for more static background stuff, e.g. the bricks, question mark blocks etc. in Mario.

More advanced topics for sprites include things like rotation, scaling, transparency and the role of sprites in today's games such as imposters & bill boards - 2D 'sprites' drawn as textures on polygons in 3D games.

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Original post by barakaso if i did get u right, a sprite is a pixel which you can display on your screen to simulate objects!! And you can specify its color and play around with it to give a good visual aspect. Am i right?

Nope. A sprite is a 2D image. Usually in a size range of 2-to-the-power-of-something, so 8x8, 16x16, 32x32, 64x64 and so on.They are used to represent objects in a game world.For example, as stated above, the Mario character was a sprite - a little picture that could be moved around the screen. The exact picture used depended on his actions - was he moving left, right, or was he jumping? A different sprite would be picked to show his action, and then draw to the screen at his coordinates.

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A pixel (short for 'picture element') is a single point on your screen. When your computer is running at "800 x 600" resolution, that means the screen is made up of a huge grid that's 800 pixels wide and 600 tall.

A sprite is made up of pixels, and if you really wanted, you could have a sprite that was just one pixel in size...but generally you wouldn't. The whole point of sprites is so you can 'collect' sets of pixel data into single units and then draw them when and where you want.

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Original post by rherm23i just started in sprites and i was wondering where do i create them. in paint? do i need a certain program?

Anything you like! Paint, Paintshop, Photoshop, it doesn't matter. It's just a bunch of bytes in a file which, together, create a image on the screen because your eyes blend the pixels together...The only thing you have to worry about later on, is how to load them into your game, but that's so hard with most file formats...

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<quote>The only thing you have to worry about later on, is how to load them into your game, but that's so hard with most file formats...</quote>

Anyway, i think most of the previous 8-bit and 16-bit games used file format sprites. Maybe that was the only way to generate good graphics at that time instead of using simple pixels. Examples are games like Tecmo NBA and Pac Man.

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Original post by baraka<quote>The only thing you have to worry about later on, is how to load them into your game, but that's so hard with most file formats...</quote>

Anyway, i think most of the previous 8-bit and 16-bit games used file format sprites. Maybe that was the only way to generate good graphics at that time instead of using simple pixels. Examples are games like Tecmo NBA and Pac Man.

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